“What about the other end?” Barney asked. “The door appeared in the cabin when you turned those switches. What happens now? Suppose someone breaks into the cabin and stares prowling around—is the door still there?”
McAllen shook his head. “Not unless that someone happened to break in within the next half-minute.” He considered. “Let’s put it this way: The Tube’s permanently centered on its two exit points, but the effect ordinarily is dissipated over half a mile of the neighborhood at the other end. For practical purposes there is no useful effect. When I’m going to go through, I bring the exit end down to a focus point . . . does this make sense? Very well. It remains focused for around sixty or ninety seconds, depending on how I set it; then it expands again.” He nodded at the locked door. “In the cabin, that’s disappeared by now. Walk through the space where it’s been, and you’ll notice nothing unusual. Clear?”
Barney hesitated. “And if that door were still open here, and somebody attempted to step through after the exit end had expanded—”
“Well,” McAllen said, moving over to a wall buzzer and pressing it. “that’s what I meant when I said it could be embarrassing. He’d get expanded too—disastrously. Could you use a drink, Mr. Chard? I know I want one.”
* * *
The drinks, served by Fredericks. were based on a rather rough grade of bourbon, but Barney welcomed them. There was an almost sick fascination in what was a certainty now: he was going to get the Tube. That tremendous device was his for the taking. He was well inside McAllen’s guard; only carelessness could arouse the old man’s suspicions again, and Barney was not going to be careless. No need to hurry anything. He would play the reserved role he had selected for himself, leave developments up to the fact that McAllen had carried the burden of his secret for twelve years, with no more satisfactory confidant than Fredericks to trust with it. Having told Barney so much, McAllen wanted to tell more. He would have needed very little encouragement to go on talking about it now.
Barney offered no encouragement. Instead, he gave McAllen a cautiously worded reminder that it was not inconceivable they had an audience here, at which McAllen reluctantly subsided. There was, however, one fairly important question Barney still wanted answered today. The nature of the answer would tell him the manner in which McAllen should now be handled.
He waited until he was on his feet and ready to leave before presenting it. McAllen’s plump cheeks were flushed from the two highballs he had put away. In somewhat awkward phrases he had been expressing his gratitude for Barney’s generous help, and his relief that because of it the work on the Tube now could be brought to an end.
“Just one thing about that still bothers me a little, doctor,” Barney said candidly.
McAllen looked concerned “What’s that, Mr. Chard?”
“Well . . . you’re in good health, I’d say.” Barney smiled. “But suppose something did happen to you before you succeeded in shutting the McAllen Tube down.” He inclined his head toward the locked door.
“That thing would still be around waiting for somebody to open it and step through . . .”
McAllen’s expression of concern vanished. He dug a forefinger cheerfully into Barney’s ribs. “Young man, you needn’t worry. I’ve been aware of the possibility, of course, and believe me I’m keeping very careful notes and instructions. Safe deposit boxes . . . we’ll talk about that tomorrow, eh? Somewhere else? Had a man in mind, as a matter of fact, but we can make better arrangements now. You see, it’s really so ridiculously easy at this stage.”
Barney cleared his throat. “Some other physicist—?”
“Any capable physicist,” McAllen said decidedly. “Just a matter, you see of how reliable he is.” He winked at Barney. “Talk about that tomorrow too—or one of these days.”
Barney stood looking down, with a kind of detached surprise, at a man who had just pronounced sentence of death casually on himself; and on an old friend. For the first time in Barney’s career, the question of deliberate murder not only entered an operation, but had become in an instant an unavoidable part of it. Frank Elby, ambitious and money-hungry, could take over where McAllen left off. Elby was highly capable, and Elby could be controlled. McAllen could not. He could only be tricked; and, if necessary, killed.
It was necessary, of course. If McAllen lived until he knew how to shut the Tube down safely, he simply would shut it down, destroy the device and his notes on it. A man who had gone to such extreme lengths to safeguard the secret was not going to be talked out of his conviction that the McAllen Tube was a menace to the world. Fredericks, the morose eavesdropper, had to be silenced with his employer to assure Barney of his undisputed possession of the Tube.
Could he still let the thing go, let McAllen live? He couldn’t, Barney decided. He’d dealt himself a hand in a new game, and a big one—a fantastic, staggering game when one considered the possibilities in the Tube. It meant new interest, it meant life for him. It wasn’t in his nature to pull out. The part about McAllen was cold necessity. A very ugly necessity, but McAllen—pleasantly burbling something as they walked down the short hall to the front door—already seemed a little unreal, a roly-poly, muttering, fading small ghost.
In the doorway Barney exchanged a few words—he couldn’t have repeated them an instant later—with the ghost, became briefly aware of a remarkably firm hand clasp, and started down the cement walk to the street. Evening had come to California at last; a few houses across the street made dim silhouettes against the hills, some of the windows lit. He felt, Barney realized, curiously tired and depressed. A few steps behind him, he heard McAllen quietly closing the door to his home.
The walk, the garden, the street, the houses and hills beyond, vanished in a soundlessly violent explosion of white light around Barney Chard.
* * *
His eyes might have been open for several seconds before he became entirely aware of the fact. He was on his back looking up at the low raftered ceiling of a room. The light was artificial, subdued; it gave the impression of nighttime outdoors. Memory suddenly blazed up. “Tricked!” came the first thought. Outsmarted. Outfoxed. And by—
Then that went lost in a brief, intense burst of relief at the realization he was still alive, apparently unhurt. Barney turned sharply over on his side—bed underneath, he discovered—and stared around.
The room was low, wide. Something indefinably odd—
He catalogued it quickly. Redwood walls, Navaho rugs on the floor, bookcases, unlit fireplace, chairs, table, desk with a typewriter and reading lamp. Across the room a tall dark grandfather clock with a bright metal disk instead of a clock-face stood against the wall. From it came a soft, low thudding as deliberate as the heartbeat of some big animal. It was the twin of one of the clocks he had seen in McAllen’s living room.
The room was McAllen’s, of course. Almost luxurious by comparison with his home, but wholly typical of the man. And now Barney became aware of its unusual feature; there were no windows. There was one door, so far to his right he had to twist his head around to see it. It stood half open; beyond it a few feet of a narrow passage lay within his range of vision, lighted in the same soft manner as the room. No sound came from there.
Had he been left alone? And what had happened? He wasn’t in McAllen’s home or in that fishing shack at the lake. The Tube might have picked him up—somehow—in front of McAllen’s house, transported him to the Mallorca place. Or he might be in a locked hideaway McAllen had built beneath the Sweetwater Beach house.
Two things were unpleasantly obvious. His investigations hadn’t revealed all of McAllen’s secrets. And the old man hadn’t really been fooled by Barney Chard’s smooth approach. Not, at any rate, to the extent of deciding to trust him.
Hot chagrin at the manner in which McAllen had handed the role of dupe back to him flooded Barney for a moment. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. His coat had been hung neatly over the back of a chair a few feet away; his shoes stood next to the bed. Otherwise he was fully clothed. Nothing in the pockets of the coat appeared to have been touched; billfold, cigarette case, lighter, even the gun, were in place; the gun, almost startlingly, was still loaded. Barney thrust the revolver thoughtfully into his trousers pocket. His wrist watch seemed to be the only item missing.